Tyler Florence Fridays: Coconut Bread with Pineapple Butter

Last week, I came across “Tyler Florence Fridays,” a blog set up by Deb of Kahakai Kitchen, Megan of My Baking Adventures, and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies, to bring together foodies who love Tyler Florence and love his equally tasty food. Every week, TFF participants cook up (or bake up) one of Tyler’s recipes from either his cookbooks or online recipes from one of his Food Network shows. TFF then posts, every Friday (as per the name!), a round-up of everyone’s dishes for the week. Just a way for us to sample Tyler’s recipes without having to try every single one of them and to find ones that we want to try and make ourselves!

I have a number of Tyler’s cookbooks and thought that TFF was the perfect opportunity and reason for me to break them out. So for my first week in “Tyler Florence Fridays,” I decided to go with something from one of my favorite meals – brunch! And so I tried Tyler's Coconut Bread with Sweet Pineapple Butter.

I love to bake and in this recipe, Tyler references trips to Sydney, Australia, one of my favorite places in the world. In particular, he talks about a breakfast place in Darlinghurst called bills. Bill Granger is the chef at bills and he is a chef that I’ve always wanted to sample his food – when in Australia, I often found myself in the cookbook section of the bookstore, paging through one of Bill’s cookbooks… In any case, bills serves up a coconut bread similar to the one here in Tyler’s cookbook, so I decided I had to try it. (Plus, Mr. J nearly salivated on the book when he heard about it).

So here it is, from Tyler’s “Real Kitchen” cookbook: Coconut Bread with Sweet Pineapple Butter.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing pan
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
1 1/2 cups of unsweetened coconut milk
1 1/2 cups shredded coconut, toasted

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 275. Grease bottom and sides of a 9x5 inch loaf pan with butter. In a large bowl, mix the flour with the baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. In another large bowl, whisk together melted butter with the brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest. Pour in the coconut milk and whisk together. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold everything together with a spatula until you have a smooth batter. Gently fold in the shredded coconut until evenly distributed. Pour into the prepared loaf pan and set it on a cookie sheet. Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the bread. Rotate the pan periodically to ensure even browning. Cool the bread in the pan for 20 minutes or so; then when cool enough to handle, remove the coconut bread to a cutting board and let it cool completely before slicing.

Thoughts/Results:

The coconut bread turned out nicely... It was admittedly a bit dry, a littel bit more dry than I would have preferred (I didn't get to make the actual pineapple butter that Tyler suggested as an accompaniment, although I think that would have given it a great flavor complement and make the bread less dry... I made a version of pineapple butter but it didn't set up very well!). But the flavors of the bread were great. The coconut is not overpowering -- more subtle hints of the coconut. The lemon zest actually comes across fairly strong, so next time, I would probably cut back a little on the lemon zest. I think that this would also be fabulous with chocolate chips (but really, almost anything is better with chocolate chips!) mixed into the batter.

The bread was a big hit with Mr. J. He brought some to work and although it crumbled quite a bit before he made it to work, he devoured it. The bread keeps well for at least a week (we took Tyler's suggestion and wrapped it up tightly and placed it in a plastic bag).

Cheers! Thanks to TFF for having me as part of this group! (I actually made a second Tyler Florence dish this past week, but will wait to post til next week :))